Organizers of the Allen D. Leman Swine Conference in St. Paul, Minn., have selected Farm Progress, part of Informa PLC, to administer the conference’s virtual platform for 2020.

Farm Progress, publisher of The Farmer, was selected for its tools that make it easy for participants to interact with presenters and each other, navigate between subject areas and allow a seamless immersion in a broad range of important topics.

“The swine industry needs to have a richer virtual experience than we have become accustomed to during the COVID period,” says professor Montse Torremorell, DVM, Ph.D., chairwoman of the Leman Conference planning team in the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Veterinary Population Medicine. “We hope to set a higher standard for virtual scientific conferences with this year’s Leman event.”

The conference will be held Sept. 19-22. Individual registrations are $250 through Aug. 30 and $300 thereafter. Discounts are available for graduate and veterinary medicine students. All prices reflect significant discounts compared to previous in-person editions of the conference. More information about the conference is available online.

Full agenda

The conference will include more keynote speakers than in previous years. The conference themes include markets, the impact of COVID-19 and lessons learned and how to prepare for emerging diseases.

The conference’s Monday keynote lecturers, Mark Greenwood of Compeer Financial, Bill Kaelin of McVean Trading and Investments, Paul Yeske of the Swine Veterinary Center, and Dave Priesler of the Minnesota Pork Producers’ Association, will discuss the impact COVID-19 has had in the swine industry and where we should go from here, how price discovery in the hog market needs to change to keep swine producers in business, the responses producers and veterinarians had to quickly adapt to the unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19 and, finally, what lessons we need to learn from all this so that we can come up with a more robust, vibrant, and resilient swine industry.

On Tuesday, HANOR Company leadership Myrl Mortenson, Dave Wade and Tara Donovan to present how their vision for change includes a strategy to bring added value to their business. From multiplication to environmental stewardship, from being at the forefront of implementing technologies to improve health and productivity to strategic partnerships that add value in final processing — all strategies are designed to capture value from the farm to the table.

Bringing value to swine businesses also entails looking at other industries and learning from the challenges they faced, in particular when responding to a foreign animal disease. Michelle Kromm, vice president of animal health and welfare for Jennie-O and veterinarian for Hormel Foods, will share her HPAI (high pathogenic avian influenza) and COVID-19 response experiences, focusing on the importance of industry involvement in preparing for and effectively responding to an emergency to better position the swine industry to respond to new diseases, such as African swine fever.

The conference will close with one last “Hallway Conversation” featuring two industry opinion leaders, Clayton Johnson (2020 Science in Practice awardee) of Carthage Veterinary Services, and Gordon Spronk of Pipestone Veterinary Services. Organizers say this will be a lively discussion about the key take-home messages of the conference and the industry attributes necessary for success going forward.

The Leman Conference is in its 47th year, honoring the legacy of Allen D. Leman, a former faculty member at the U-M College of Veterinary Medicine. His unwavering dedication to the education of practicing veterinarians was manifested, at least in part, through his leadership of this conference.

Source: University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all of its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.